Statistics
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm51c..02s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM51C-02
Statistics
2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2744 Magnetotail, 2788 Magnetic Storms And Substorms (7954), 2790 Substorms, 7829 Kinetic Waves And Instabilities
Scientific paper
More than forty years of efforts in the theoretical description of magnetospheric substorms have resulted in an impressive and multi-facet picture of the phenomenon. Its elements are clustered around two major competing models of the magnetotail reconnection and current disruption. However, there are still important elements that are missing in the substorm puzzle and that should be targeted in the future studies. One of them is the mechanism of the spontaneous reconnection onset in the magnetotail. The presently dominating view requires the onset to be triggered by the formation of an X-line in the original tail-like magnetic field geometry. This triggering either by the inside-out propagation of the disturbance from the current disruption region or directly by the solar wind appears to be at variance with Geotail statistics and recent Themis observations. At the same time, modern theories and particle simulations with open boundaries suggest that the reconnection instability in the tail may start before the formation of the X-line and may be drastically different from its simplified picture based on reconnection of anti-parallel magnetic fields. Further studies in this direction require 3D particle simulations to understand the role of the ballooning-interchange instability and the possible formation of entropy-depleted flux tubes. According to the current disruption model, the latter instability along with others, driven by the strong cross-tail current, may be an independent cause of substorms. However, in spite of many specific models proposed to date, the dominating current disruption mechanism and whether it is spontaneous or externally driven remains unclear. Probably even more efforts are required to obtain the detailed description of the global consequences of the current disruption, including the properties of the rarefaction wave, the main agent of the inside-out signal propagation.
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